Models for Destruction

Aachen was doomed, but the destruction of Charlemagne's historic residence was now no more than an episode in the tense tactical drama on the western front. The battle that raged in mounting fury northeast of the German border city was far more significant. This week there were ample signs that here the Allies hoped they might achieve their breakthrough to the Rhine.

The two arms which Lieut. General Courtney Hicks Hodges' First U.S. Army had thrown around Aachen in a classic bear hug had posed two deadly questions to the Germans : 1 ) should the ancient spa (and modern textile and coal mining center) be defended to the last cellar, as a Stalingrad-like model for the German home front? 2) was it also the focus of the main Allied offensive to smash the Siegfried Line?

The Nazi command—not Aachen's 20,000 unevacuated civilians— quickly answered the first question. It chose certain destruction of the city rather than surrender a point that had become tactically valueless. But the High Command could not so quickly make up its mind about the second and more important question.

By midweek, when Aachen had been beaten into mortar-stained destruction, the German command apparently came to its decision: the battle centered on Aachen was indeed the real thing. Now quick to act, the Germans plunged into desperate attacks to break the left arm of Hodges' army. Recklessly they expended sorely needed first-rate fighting "men in futile efforts to smash the most advanced spearheads. In two days they spent more than 60 tanks, gave up the intensive battle for the next two days to gather more strength.

Big Guns. From the sore spot at Arnhem—the most dangerous point for break out into the north German plain—the enemy pulled out more tanks and men, hurled them against Hodges' lines in a new assault. The Americans had seen the reserves and the armor piling up, were braced for the onslaught. When it came this week, the battle became one of the fiercest yet fought in the west.

At first German tanks overran U.S. forward positions. Then a thunderous cannonade from more than 100 big guns massed in the assault area broke the attack, forced the German armor to back up.

By now, it was clear that the Germans feared the First Army's strength most of all the forces they faced in the west. They warned themselves of U.S. concentrations "for a grand-scale assault" aimed at the Cologne plain east of Geilenkirchen (twelve miles north of Aachen). To dispose his forces to meet it, the enemy shifted his dwindling reserves under the protection of swarms of mobile antiaircraft guns. Still Allied airmen in complete command of the air took a heavy toll of men & material.

Big Bombs. Whether the Germans had rightly guessed where the main blow would fall or whether they had been maneuvered into shifting their strength to the wrong spot was still an Allied secret. But it was no secret that when the blow fell its fury would be worse than anything the Germans had felt before in the west.